Sunday, April 26, 2015

No Feedback on the Kickstarter Campaign

Not surprisingly my Kickstarter Campaign has received no feedback.

The primary reason that I started the campaign was to get feedback. I had just spent seven years trying to hold a meeting about free market health care reform. In seven years, I had been unable to find anyone in Utah willing to talk about health care reform.

I admit that starting a Kickstarter project just to get feedback is pathetic. I live in a state where people simply do not talk to each other.

I came up with the idea for the project back in the 1980s as a thought experiment. I filed the idea away simply as a topic of conversation if ever I met a person interested in discussing public policy. I look back and realize that I've gone three decades without finding anyone interested in talking about an interesting topic.

I decided at the beginning of year that I wanted to self-publish a few of the ideas that I had worked on as books. My heart was set on using Outskirts Press. But they charge a minimum of $700 per book. I'd have to sell 100 books to cover the cost of publishing. iUniverse has similar.

I thought I'd try Kickstarter to raise $800, which would cover the set up fees and a fee for submitting the book for an LCCN number.

This idea has failed. Since I am working on this and a few other books, I thought I might publish through Amazon Kindle.

To my delight, I discovered that Amazon had acquired a print on demand publisher named Create Space. If I understand their contract correctly I can publish the book and order printed copies of the book for the print-on-demand price for the book. The free service includes an ISBN and I can submit the book for a Library of Congress Number for just $25.

Apparently, Lulu.com has also switched to the Print on Demand model. Unfortunately, Lulu.com only takes works written in Microsoft Word. I am scribing the book in Notepad++. I have a big text file with basic SGML mark up.

Anyway, by going the Create Space route, I no longer need to come up with an upfront publishing fee eliminating the need to try to presell copies of the book.

Unfortunately, my inability to get any feedback brings up the horrible truth that I am sitting here writing a book that is unlikely to be read by another human. I am also brooding on the fact that I am stuck in a state full of closed minded dullards.

This is not what America should be. In America, it should be possible to find people willing to discuss important issues of the day. This book on tax-reform is a dull topic. Health Care is a more important topic. Why is it that Utah Republicans and dead set against public discussion of free market health care reform?

The reason that Republicans are adamantly opposed to discussing free market health care reform is an ideology imported from England in the 1950s called "Conservatism."

Conservatism is an ideology that came from the Tories. The goal of conservatism was to preserve the class structure of the English Monarchy.

American Conservatism was crafted by the GOP in the 1950s and 1960s to attract Southerners disaffected by the Civil Rights Movement. The American Conservative Movement was based on the Conservative coalition crafted by Sir Winston Churchill.

To understand Churchill's coalition, one has to understand English partisan history.

Conservatism was created in the 1830s as an effort to rebrand the Tory Party as moderates. The Liberal Party, like the US Founders and the Republican Party, was created in the 1850s from the Whig Party. The Liberal Party supported free trade and freedom of religion. The Liberal Party fell apart when people realized that, if given the right to vote, Irish Catholics would vote for independence and would expel their British overlords.

The Liberal Party fell apart in the early 1900s and was displaced by the Labour Party which promoted socialism. Conservatives took to calling socialism "liberal."

Winston Churchill was a classical liberal. He and other classical liberals formed a coalition with the Conservatives to oppose the social liberal policies of Lloyd George.

Stepping forward in time. Chamberlain, the guy who appeased Hitler, was a traditional conservative.

As a classical liberal, Churchill understood that one needed to defend freedom. Churchill formed a coalition with anyone he could against Hitler.

William F Buckley sought to form a coalition with classical liberals and conservatives. Barry Goldwater tried running on this platform. His platform pulled in the Dixiecrats, but Establishment Republicans balked and Goldwater failed miserably.

Nixon formed a coalition between social conservatives and The Republican Establishment, Nixon won spectacularly.

The GOP fell into crisis after Watergate. Reagan managed to scrape together a broad-based coalition and won.

George Bush the First and George Bush the Second revived the Nixon coalition between social conservatives and the establishment. The first Bush started one war, then lost to Bill Clinton. The second Bush campaigned on "compassionate conservative." He started two wars, engaged in unprecedented deficit spending and pursued economic policies that threw our nation into a tail spin.

The Tea Party started with the promise of reviving the Goldwater coalition between social conservatives and classical liberals.

Shrill conservatives systematically drove everyone out of the Tea Party and it floundered; so we are now back the GOP being a closed party dominated by the establishment and social conservatives. The party has become intolerant toward the classical liberal ideas.

This whole thing is so depressing.

The fact that I am a pariah really doesn't matter. That the GOP appears to have returned to the path of slamming the door on free market ideas is troubling.

Conservatism is the ideology of the Tories. It was imported by the GOP for the dubious goal of drawing the Dixiecrats into the Republican Party. The Tories were against the US Founders. The Dixiecrats are racists who rejected the Civil Rights Movement. The Republican Party traded its beautiful legacy as a party of liberty for the garbage ideals of conservatism.

I am thinking that if I self published several books, I could hit the road and maybe find a place where classical liberal discussion is appreciated. But, quite frankly, I see myself writing stuff that I know no-one will read.

Since there has been no response, and I don't anticipate any, I am going to let the Kickstarter campaign run its course, but I will stop promoting it.

The way I see it, people have to try hundreds of different things. Most paths lead nowhere.